Stream

I wanted to explore simple WYSIWYG website editors (markdown acceptable) for personal academic sites, focusing on those that can be hosted on GitHub Pages for free, or that you at least own your content. Here's what I discovered:

Paid options: Blot(which I highly recommend, you still own your content!), Pagy Pagy – Simple website builder, WordPress.org Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS - WordPress.org, Webflow: Create a custom website | Visual website builder, and wix.com Your website, your business, your future｜Wix.com

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Something just clicked for me right now, at midnight. I can't think and type at the same time. I can think and blabber out loud, even though blabbering is slower, but it's not enough of a difference to hamper my thinking.

This is similar to how reading out loud makes some people struggle with processing what they are reading, especially when their internal reading doesn't match the speed of their speaking abilities. But blabbering produces a huge wall of text, just like this one!

It gets even worse when I am reading a paper, for example, and I have thoughts about parts of it. In an ideal world, I will circle them, scribble around for context, but cropping them and typing out my comment 100% breaks the flow for me. And I can't read and process huge walls of text.

This is what I've been struggling with. This is why I scribble down stuff because scribbling down with colors and pens in a spatial manner makes it way easier for me to relate stuff, to pick bits and pieces that would go together. It makes it easy for me to read and process it once I am done with the dumping. Unfortunately, it makes it harder for me later organize it, search it, or document it.

I don't know how I had this realization, but it is so fascinating and disappointing at the same time.

Something just clicked for me right now, at midnight. I cannot think and type at the same time. I can think and blabber out loud, even though blabbering is slower, but it is not enough of a difference to hamper my thinking. This is similar to how reading out loud makes some people struggle with processing what they are reading, especially when their internal reading does not match the speed of their speaking abilities.

But blabbering produces a huge damn wall of text, just like this one! It gets even worse when I am reading a paper for example, and I have thoughts about parts of it. In an ideal world, I will circle them, scribble around for context, but cropping them and typing out my comment 100% breaks the flow for me. And I cannot read and process huge walls of text. This one is fine, because I am just posting it and never need to come back to it again.

But for long term stuff, I cannot do this!

This is what I have been struggling with. This is why I scribble down stuff because scribbling down with colors and pens in a spatial manner makes it way easier for me to relate stuff, to pick bits and pieces that would go together. It makes it easy for me to read and process it once I am done with the dumping. Unfortunately it makes it harder for me later organize it, search it or document it. I don't know how I had this realization, but it is so fascinating (I figured a piece of the puzzle!) and disappointing (no off the shelf note-taking system will match my needs) at the same time.

I really cannot do note-taking apps that aren't true WYSIWYG

What I specifically mean is, Obsidian has a live preview option that allows me to see everything else rendered other than the line I am editing. And that bothers me. Seeing markdown makes me feel like I am writing a paper in LaTeX and I do not necessarily enjoy that.

And note-taking needs to be an enjoyable process for me. It also needs to not have wild context shifts, messy layouts, having all metadata stored and cluttering the text.

I can't even have a differently colored highlight without it showing up in text. And that is just not gonna work.

I am one of those people who cannot handle multiple apps that do the same thing. Whether they are for personal or professional use, if both apps are about tasks, then it's really tough for me to use both.

However, I've realized that I can manage multiple apps if they serve very specific, compartmentalized purposes. For example, I want my journal and personal databases to be interconnected, but do I really need my shopping list to be linked up? It serves no purpose being in my PKM app.

Take bookmarks, for instance. It's quite a hassle to have bookmarks in Notion, and I'm considering alternatives like Chrome bookmarks or Raindrop. So, in short, it's all about compartmentalizing your digital life to make things less complicated.

Based on my experience with Notion, I have quickly realized, I do not really like how Notion handles pages. But I am waiting to switch.

There's obviously a hint of a struggle within me; I really like Notion and don't want to leave. My hesitation mainly comes from a keen interest in how different apps are going to integrate AI. To me, the low-hanging fruit of integration, like synthesis during content creation, is incredibly dull. I absolutely don't care about it. What I'm truly waiting for is to see how these apps will handle the transformation of unstructured content into structured forms and semantic searches.

I've been using Notion primarily for long-form documents that have properties. So, for anything that requires extended content, Notion works fine for me.

However, when it comes to tasks, journalling, or lists, I find myself unintentionally avoiding the platform. I really dislike using Notion for tasks. Writing a 'done' list feels like a chore, and linking pages feels pointless because that information just seems to disappear.

And yeah, that makes me kind of sad.

The main concern is that current databases cannot be ported over to this new feature. And I am kinda okay with it?

I think it's a new user onboarding feature. It's kinda similar to buying templates from people, just that this one is made by Notion and has some features inbuilt. This feature isn't really meant for people who customize their systems heavily or for those who already have established systems.

One way to approach this is by asking myself: Do I want this company to make money and stay alive? If the answer is yes, I just make peace with it. On the other hand, if I don't like the direction things are taking, I look for an alternative.

It's worth noting that if companies don't focus on making money, they often end up shutting down. And here I am, working in research and choosing to make less money in return for increased, well, let's call it misery.

Muse recently launched their Muse for teams and I have two wishes. I wish they had an option of publicly sharing the board, and that other spatial canvases adopted how well they implement the spatial and handwriting aspect of it.

I have been sharing tips and tricks and templates over the course of past year on Twitter, but now the links are gonna change.

Why? Because I wanted to change the workspace where my Notion templates were hosted. And I wanted to change my homepage. Most URL shorteners do not allow you to edit the destination URL for free. So, I found a great repo on GitHub built by younho_9.

And now, I can edit the URL in my Notion database and still shorten all the URLs. That is awesome!